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DURYEA — Officials don’t yet know how a fire at the Schott North America Inc. glass plant started on Tuesday, but they do know it caused in excess of $50 million structural and equipment damage and destroyed products.
The multi-alarm blaze also closed down operations and left most of its 230 employees without work for an undetermined period. A company statement said it is unclear when operations will resume.
State Police Trooper Brian Atherholt, of the Troop P Fire Marshal Unit in Wyoming, said the cause of the blaze at the hi-tech glass plant and research facility at 400 York Ave. is undetermined, but not of a suspicious nature.
Atherholt said he and Trooper Ronald Jarocha, also of the Troop P unit, and Trooper Jamison Sgaralat, of the Troop N Fire Marshal Unit in West Hazleton, had been investigating the fire scene since 9 a.m. Wednesday. While they concluded their on-scene investigation by mid-afternoon, Atherholt said it’s possible a cause may be determined in the future.
He said there are video-surveillance cameras throughout the facility, and most are monitored in a security office. However, video from the camera system in the plant’s main warehouse, where the fire was determined to have started, was fed to another office, and that equipment was damaged in the fire.
The plant manufactures glass designed for numerous high-tech applications, from telescopes to space shuttle flights to laser ignition systems that eject fighter pilots from jets that are about to crash.
“They’re looking at a loss upwards of $50 million between the structure and product that was inside,” Atherholt said he was told by Schott officials.
Statement
Schott North America published a written statement about the fire on the company website on Wednesday.
“The employees and the local fire departments reacted quickly, and fortunately there were no injuries,” the statement reads. “The team in Duryea is working hard to restart operations as soon as possible. SCHOTT will share further details soon.”
Atherholt said there was no one working in the warehouse area when the fire started shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday. There were small groups of other employees working in other parts of the plant. All escaped safely, and none of the more than 100 firefighters from 34 fire companies that responded were injured while battling the blaze, he said.
“The Duryea firefighters and all the firefighters should be credited with one hell of a job,” Atherholt said.
‘Highly toxic’
Atherholt said a section of the plant called “the batch house” holds “numerous different chemicals used for producing glass that are highly toxic. And amazingly, the firefighters kept the fire away from it,” he said.
Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said DEP officials were on the scene at the time of the fire and Wednesday morning. She said air quality testing was performed around the facility because of the presence of about a dozen toxic chemicals inside, including hydrochloric, hydrofluoric and sulfuric acids.
Connolly said the test results did not indicate any dangerous levels of materials in the air. She added that some runoff water “probably came in contact with some of the chemicals,” but was contained to acreage behind the facility. She also said some of the affected water also went into the waste-water treatment plants at the facility.
Connolly said PH balances of the water were tested, and result came back neutral.
In addition to the investigators from the fire marshal units and DEP officials, hazardous materials crews and a canine from the Scranton Police Department called “Ember” were also at the plant.
Workers react
The smell of smoke was still heavy in the air Wednesday, as plant employees gathered in nearby parking lots and watched as crews worked in an around the building. One worker said that it was hard going about her daily routine without reporting to work.
Ed Slusser said he got to the plant shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
“The fire was so devastating, it was like watching your own house burn to the ground,” he said, echoing the sentiments of other employees who declined to provide their names.
Slusser said that the damage inside of his work area is extensive, and he estimated that the company lost “hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of glass in a couple hours.”
Slusser, 60, of Pittston Township, has been an employee at the plant for more than 40 years. That tenure has included various jobs within the plant, from in the mold shop to maintenance. Slusser also said he was involved in building additions onto the plant, and has seen the plant grow over the years.
Now, he is a logistics operator in shipping and receiving. That position, as well as the building that Slusser referred to as his home, is in question.
History
The plant has been in Duryea for 45 years and at one time employed up to 450 people, site manager Michael Brown said in November. Corporate officials announced in November that up to 80 workers at the plant would lose their jobs this month, when the company will move some of its optical glass production to its headquarters in Mainz, Germany.
“Totally, totally the worst time that this could possibly happen,” Slusser said. He was thankful, however, that there were no injuries as a result of the fire.
The status of the layoff plans has not yet been verified.
Schott’s core markets are the household appliance, pharmaceutical, electronics, optics and transportation industries.
As Slusser stood outside with his co-workers, he had a thought that many others probably also had: When would it be time to go back to work?
“You got a lot of guys depending on this paycheck, myself included,” he said. “The sooner we get something up, if anything, to start making money, the better.”